When Will Bollywood Talk About Blue Chips

I remember what happened when 'The Wolf of Wall Street' was released to audiences in 2014. All my fellow classmates in MBA were raving and ranting about the sleaze, the scorching profanity and the sizzling style but there was something else as well. For many of us Indian viewers, Martin Scorsese' film was something like the definitive word on the Wall Street. I heard many relatives and friends gushing about how much they learnt about how penny stocks were sold by brokers for profits in commission and about the big Steve Madden IPO some years ago.

To be honest, the film was a pitch-black and outrageous satire on the very nature of our obsessions with wealth, raunchy sexuality and other unhealthy vices. But the fact that so many Indians place it alongside more topical films like 'Wall Street' or 'Margin Call' goes on to prove that we are suckers for any film, or for that matter, anything related to stocks and the share market Investments.

And that might remind me to ask this: when is Bollywood coming up with a film that would capture this nearly nationwide obsession with investing our savings and earnings in the share market? I know at least a dozen people in my own social circle who can talk about everything happening in the share market for hours & many websites like top10stockbroker which provides many information regarding stock broker review & share market tips. Will there be even one film that will portray this burgeoning obsession or even tell us a tale, like a thriller or even an inspiring success story, set against the backdrop of the share market?

And the lack of Bollywood films on this subject is somewhat baffling. There is quite a wealth of material to portray on the screen and not just recent incidents or scams. The cotton scam of the 19th century is one such example, a travesty in which the businessman Premchand Roychand manipulated the shortage of cotton in Britain owing to the American Civil War to make profits by many investments made by an excited public. It is a story that deserves to be filmed with all its foolhardy ambition and public greed. When will our mainstream filmmakers think of it as an ideal plot for a hardened period Bollywood entertainer?

Coincidentally, Roychand was also the founder of the Bombay Stock Exchange. This means that a script about the share market need not be just about just the seamier aspects like scams and scandals. It could be also something positive as well as reflective of the changes in the way we trade in stocks in the present. 

Not so long ago, a lot of people traded in shares through their existing bank accounts. The banks like kotak securities, icicidirect, HDFC securities, SBI Cap securities and financial institutions like Sharekhan, Angel broking, Zerodha, Motilal Oswal, 5Paisa, IIFL, Edelweiss, Upstox & others offered this facility to their customers but constraints of time and infrastructure in urban India have made this now a major hurdle. Physical delivery of shares transactions is no longer practicable. This is why people are taking the assistance of professional broking houses and shifting their investments and securities to digital trading accounts and trading through online platforms and tools.

This is indeed a paradigm-altering upheaval in the mindset of the average Indian investor. And if Bollywood, which prides itself on focusing almost on every major social issue these days, chooses to ignore this any further, well it is saddening to say the least. It is high time that our films started talking about blue chips.